What Has Been Done by W. A. Colcord

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 16, 1905

What Has Been Done

By W. A. Colcord

W. A. COLCORD

UNDER the name of the Religious Liberty Bureau, the religious liberty work has become an integral part of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

The Bureau has been officered, provided with an office, and the office supplied with the necessary furniture, stationery, stenographer, etc.

Thousands of letters and communications have been sent out.

Nine thousand petition blanks, and twenty thousand copies of the leaflet “Sunday Bills Now Before Congress,” have been published, and supplied, for the most part, free of cost to our people.

Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the “Religious Liberty Leaflets” series have been prepared and published.

The issuing of the “Open Letter” to the Washington clergy, which grew out of our religious liberty work, the Religious Liberty Bureau issuing and circulating the first ten thousand copies of it, and attending to its publication in the Washington Post, has made a stir, and is doing a great work. About a quarter of a million copies of this have now been published in one form or another.

Hundreds of thousands of signatures have been secured to our petitions to Congress against religious legislation; the petitions have been returned, and presented to Congress.

Many congressmen have been interviewed, and every one supplied with religious liberty literature.

Five public meetings, among them a mass-meeting to discuss the Sunday bills, and the results of religious legislation in general, have been held in Washington this winter under the direction of the Religious Liberty Bureau, the department bearing the expense of half rent and advertising.

As the result of all this agitation, over twenty columns of matter on religious legislation and the Sabbath question have appeared in the Washington papers.

And all this has, under the blessing of the Lord, had its effect. One of the men who introduced one of the Sunday bills now before Congress assured us that he did not think it would be called up or reported on at all at this session. “There is opposition to it,” he said. “The Seventh-day people are opposing it.”

In addition to all that has been mentioned, through this means our people have had an opportunity to call the attention of their friends and neighbors to the truth for this time, and thus a widespread agitation has been created.

What has been done has required time and thought, and has entailed some expense. But what has been done is only a beginning to what we desire, plan, and expect to do. We therefore hope for a generous contribution from our liberty-loving people at this time, that the work may be carried on.